The group, Sunshine Boys and Citizens for Rational Development, wants to put in the city charter a right to vote on condemnation of properties selected for blight by the city’s urban renewal authority, Littleton Invests for Tomorrow. The protesters also want to be able to vote on the organization’s use of tax increment financing.

“That’s a serious enough thing that we want citizens to vote on that, and not City Council,” said Paul Bingham, who is spearheading the petition campaign. He added he’s against urban renewal in general because he believes market forces will decide whether a project is feasible or not.

Plans for Columbine Square and Santa Fe Drive will go before the planning board Sept. 11, and the authority a is working on plans for Broadway and Littleton Boulevard.

Bingham and others in the city are also concerned the urban renewal authority will repeat the mistakes of the Littleton Riverfront Authority, which invested millions of dollars of taxpayer money in the failed $150 million retail development Riverfront Festival Center.

Many members of the current urban renewal authority, Littleton Invests for Tomorrow, were also members of the Littleton Riverfront Authority.

Doug Clark, mayor of Littleton from 2007 to 2011, was on the board of the Littleton Riverfront Authority board from 1998 to 1999 . He is involved in the petition efforts.

He said the Riverfront Festival Center debacle ended up costing the city $9.2 million. That concerns him because the new urban renewal authority is looking at the same property, at the southwest corner of Santa Fe Drive and Bowles Avenue. The property is currently occupied by a call center.

He said the authority has an important role to play in thoughtful redevelopment.

“Urban renewal areas afford commercial property owners access to a financing tool others from around the state and country have successfully used to invest in their property and communities,” Rees said in an e-mail. “Prohibiting tax increment financing will stifle Littleton’s economic development not just today, but into the distant future.”

Urban renewal authorities in Colorado use tax increment financing to fund redevelopment projects targeted at improving blighted areas. When improvements are made to an area, the value of the property goes up, and sales and property taxes are higher. Under the TIF plan, the “increment” of the increased tax collections goes to the developer, not the tax districts such as schools, government and first-responder agencies.

Mayor Phil Cernanec agreed with Rees, adding that most developers are not going to wait for an election to decide whether or not to go forward with a project. He also said residents don’t have to be concerned the same mistakes will be made.

He added: “There are public hearings involved, so it’s not that people don’t have a voice.”

More in News

A member of a "sophisticated cocaine trafficking conspiracy" was convicted Monday in federal court in Denver of conspiring to distribute, and possessing with intent to distribute, five kilograms or more of cocaine, according to prosecutors.

A man who shot two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder, will not be allowed to leave the Colorado Mental Health Institute's grounds without supervision, according to a Jefferson County District Court ruling.

After the San Francisco Bay Area, metro Denver experienced the biggest apartment rent increases this decade in the country. But plenty of new supply should put future rent gains closer to the national average, according to a new report from RealPage, a real estate research firm.